Untiled Life - Lacey Overbaugh (good non fiction books to read TXT) 📗

Chapter 1: The First Years

I was born in a small town in Texas. I don't remember much if anything at all of my first few years there. I've seen pictures but have only the vaugest memories of color.
I know we lived in a trailor. My mother, my father, my sister, and myself all together in a small house with aluminum foil taped to the tiny windows to keep the heat out.
I got chicken pocks with my sister in Texas. I remember taking pictures as she squeezed me and smiled. I had a cool white hat with polka dots and a diaper. My dad thought it was funny when I scratched my tummy.
I do not remember the move to Oklahoma. The house we moved into was a tiny two bedroom made of pink and gray brick. We had a carport and a driveway and a backyard next to a cattle field. Sometimes the cows would come right up to the barbed wire as we played on the swings. My mother would get scared and call us inside where we would look at them from the kitchen window. It was hot and the sky was the deepest blue.
I would stand outside looking up into the eternity of blue. I would notice how the horizen looked curved and that the world really was round. I would yell at the clouds and would hear my silly words echoed back to me. I wonder what the neighbors thought as they heard me shouting "CHEESEBURGER!" as loud as I possibly could.
I was still very young then. I wore diapers and frilly dresses. My first vivid memory is of a diaper rash. My mother and grandmother had to put cream on my red painful skin. I cried in confusion. What is this pain I feel in such a soft and awkward area? The cream made the pain go away. A hug took away my tears.
I have always loved to eat Macaroni and cheese. I loved the bowl, the spoon, the cheesy little noodles. I would sit in my highchair and eat to my fill, and then I would dump the remainder on my head as I wore the bowl like a hat. I thought it made perfect sense at the time.
I begged my mother to let me finish watching T.V. once before eating mac and cheese. I had to promise her that I wouldn't wear the bowl as a hat and she sat me and my green and white highchair on the carpet. I knew that was pure luck.
I grew fast in Oklahoma. I went from diapers to big girl panties in no time. I started going to Osage Nation Headstart. I remember visiting that place and being so excited about all the toys and the playground outside. What a fun time that was! We learned about colors and how to tie bows. We learned how to speak in Osage and even had a ceremonial indian dance at our graduation.
Sometimes we would have fun days where we were told to do something like dress up as a cowboy or cowgirl. Such a day did occur and I knew I had the perfect cowgirl outfit. It was a light blue jean frilly skirt with pink ribbon hemmed at the bottom. The top was a light blue jean tie top that showed my belly a little.
That morning my mother wanted to dress me in my least favorite dress. It was a triangle cut pink soda shop girl kind of dress with black poodles in the left corner. I explained to her that it was cowgirl day and that the teacher told us to dress up. She finally gave up on the pink dress and allowed me to wear the blue jean outfit.
I was the only kid in the class who dressed up. I guess no one else had a cute little cowgirl outfit. The teacher dressed up as a boy wearing an orange flannel tucked into some rodeo jeans and brown cowboy boots. She even had a funny black mustache.
By the end of the day the teacher took of the mustache and she looked like a regular woman in Oklahoma who maybe really enjoyed country music. I got off the bus to go to my Grandma's house and to wait for my Mom to get off work. My grandma had been informed of my clothing decision that morning and thought she had caught me in a lie.
"No one else dressed up like a cowboy," she said.
"The teacher took off her mustache," I tried to explain.
I recieved a spanking from my Grandma for lieing even though I did not lie. I was so incredibly hurt. I could not understand why she would not listen to me. Why did she not believe me? What had I done?
I held that grudge for an incredibly long time. I even talked to her about it when I got older and told her how that made me feel. It is funny how we let the little things like that get to us.
Sometimes I went to daycare at a place called Dimples and Smiles. I was actually very popular there with all of the kids. I had two really good friends. One was a girl named Jessica and one was a boy named Quentin. Jessica and Quentin didn't like each other much, so we split playtime in half. The first part of playtime Jessica and I would play house or something girly. Jessica liked to use our dress-up clothes and wear a big circle skirt to be a princess, or the mother. The second half Quentin would steal me away and we would play Power Rangers. I was usually the Yellow Ranger because if Jessica ever felt like joining in, she had to be the pink one.
I would find myself in time-out often, for reasons I don't remember. I would sit in a corner crying and regretful until finally I would ask if I could get out. My teacher would say no. I would tell her that I had been in there for a long time. I distinctly recall every time she looked me in the eye and said "Well, thats tough."
She had a bowl cut hairdoo. I liked her normally, but when she said the word "tough" I hated her. What does that even mean? Tough. I always thought of a hard brick of cheese that looked a lot like swiss. To this day, if someone were to say "that is tough," I will still invision a block of holey cheese. Also, when I think of the name Quentin I think of pickles. I guess he must have enjoyed the sour and tangy flavor of pickles.
For fun I liked to stack canned vegitables into towers higher than myself. I also liked to take a cooking pot full of a huge collection of random buttons my mother had, and stir it with a wooden spoon.
I was also a bit of a daredevil. I would go outside and lay face down on the drive way with my mouth open infront of huge black spiders. The game was to see how close the spider could get to my mouth before I got scared and ran away. I would also sneak into the livingroom while everyone was asleep at night to have Mario Nintendo all to myself. I would get caught everytime but most often I got a few good minutes into the game.
I had an imagination. I tried to jump off of large rocks in my neighborhood and fly. I knew that if I just believed enough that it was possible. My feet striking the ground was always a surprise.
One summer my dad built a huge white towering playhouse. There was a square storage space underneath with a door and a lock that we could put our bicycles in. There was a long thin ladder up to the top. My dad even installed a real glass window. That playhouse was really fun and all the other kids wanted to come over and play house with us. Unfortunatly it was also very hot and prone to spiders and wasps making their nice cozy homes inside too. We didn't play in it much after that first summer.
Our neighbor Andrew also had a similar playhouse structure. His was gray and we were not allowed to go inside, or even over to his blue house for some reason. That was okay because he wasn't a very nice kid to begin with. A tall, lanky, red haired poop face. I would tell him as much as he taunted us over their wooden fence, that he had a trampoline, and we did not.
There were some kids a few houses down that we were allowed to play with. We would go over to their backyard and run around in the sprinkler with our clothes on. Sometimes we would get in trouble for doing that without permission but it was well worth the amount of fun we had.
In our neighborhood in Oklahoma everyone was Native American. They were Osage or Cherokee. I am part Cherokee. There was a girl a few houses down named Ivy who really looked native american. I used to think she was the prettiest girl around. We went to preschool together and I was jealous of Katelyn who was also in our group. Ivy and I were meant to be best friends. I don't think Ivy liked me that much. She would often tattle tale on me for hitting her or something. I knew that she was different from the other children. She just had something in her blood that screamed "I am popular. I am pretty. Everyone wants to be my friend."
My mother was a secretary and I thought she was the most beautiful woman there ever was. When she sang in the bathroom before work I would tell her that she should have been a singer. She would laugh and tell me that she wasn't that good. I really thought she was.
She wore long silky type dresses in all different colors with shoulder pads. She wore heels all day and her make up was heavy. Hairspray was essential to her color treated and permed locks.
One morning as she was getting all dolled up for work I rolled right out of the full size bed my sister and I shared. The floors in the rooms of our house were a very hard and thick tile like the kind you would see in a school cafeteria. As my head hit the floor I woke up in an intense amount of pain and shock. I wailed in agony. My mother dropped her make-up brush and came right over and held me in her arms shushing me. My sister never woke up. Her hugs and kisses made the pain ebb away and she tucked me